


Alive

by MoonlightBreeze



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alec Lightwood Angst, Alec Lightwood Deserves Nice Things, Alec Lightwood Loves Magnus Bane, Alec Lightwood Needs A Hug, Alec Lightwood-centric, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Comforting Magnus Bane, Crying Alec Lightwood, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally Hurt Alec Lightwood, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Good Boyfriend Magnus Bane, High Warlock of Brooklyn Magnus Bane, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Insecure Alec Lightwood, Interspecies Relationship(s), M/M, Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood Fluff, My First Work in This Fandom, Self-Harm, Self-Harming Alec Lightwood, Shadowhunter Alec Lightwood, Understanding Magnus Bane, Warlock Magnus Bane, self-harm scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:47:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22262065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonlightBreeze/pseuds/MoonlightBreeze
Summary: After the events of the party in S2: E8, Magnus and Alec talk about what happened and some difficult truths are revealed.Contains mentions of self-harm and suicide attempt, nothing explicit.
Relationships: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood
Comments: 16
Kudos: 315





	Alive

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, guys! As you might have seen from the tags, this is my first work in this fandom! I just started watching Shadowhunters recently and when I watched S2: E8, I couldn't help but feel that there must be more to the story if Alec was completely ready to jump off of a balcony at Hallucination!Clary's words. While I did love the talk that Alec and Magnus did have about it in the next episode, I found it a little underwhelming. So, I wrote how I thought the scene should have gone and got a bit carried away. 
> 
> There is a trigger warning for mentions of self-harm and a suicide attempt in this fic; if this could trigger you, please do not read. If you want to leave a comment, I'd love to hear what you thought of this little story! I really hope you like this and I hope you have a wonderful day/night!
> 
> ~ Em

“Wait, Alexander!” Magnus called out just before the boy slipped out the door with his family. Alec turned to face his boyfriend. A deep sense of dread began to rise in him. He knew what this was about. 

“Alexander, we have to talk,” Magnus’s voice was a deep rumble in Alec’s ear, and he found himself shivering - whether from fear of the discussion that Magnus was referring to or simply because of the warlock’s captivating nature, he didn’t know. Alec closed his eyes, just for a moment or two, trying to decide what the right decision was. He knew that he had the power to walk out and prolong the ‘talk’ until the next day. He could go back to the Institute and gather his thoughts. However, Alec knew that, more than anything, Magnus valued honesty and openness. His boyfriend had a talent for uncovering the truth, even when he himself didn’t know what that truth was. 

So Alec swallowed his fear, took a deep breath, and mumbled, “Yeah.” He turned to his family and, with courage he didn’t feel, said, “I’m going to stay the night here with Magnus.” He kept his gaze solely focused on Jace, his parabatai, and Izzy, his constant supporter, rather than on his mother. He could feel Maryse’s hateful eyes glaring into him. His shoulders slumped slightly with the knowledge that, no matter what had happened that night, no matter how many wrongs had been righted, his mother would always hate this part of him. 

“Very well,” Maryse said, her tone crisp as always. “I expect you to be back before the Clave meeting tomorrow.” The message was clear: I don’t want to have to explain this sort of absence to any Clave members. 

“Yes, Mother,” Alec said carefully. When it came to his warlock boyfriend, he knew that he had to pick his battles.

“Night, Alec.” Clary smiled softly at him, Simon’s hand resting in hers. Alec winced as he saw that Jace had noticed, too, and an almost murderous look had seeped into his parabatai’s eyes. He smiled softly at Jace, telling the other boy without words that he was there for him. Jace acknowledged this with a small half-smile of his own before he turned and thundered down the steps of Magnus’s apartment after the others. Izzy squeezed Alec’s arm; a silent reassurance. Of course, she thought she was reassuring him against his mother’s intolerance. For once, however, Maryse’s reaction to his relationship was the farthest thing from Alec’s mind as he bade his sister goodnight and Magnus closed the door behind the group.

Alec took a deep breath. It was time to face the fireworks.

Magnus took his boyfriend’s hand and lead him to the sofa, taking a seat across from him in the armchair. He wasn’t sure how difficult this discussion was going to be for Alec, so he wanted to give the Shadowhunter space if he needed it. 

“Alec, what happened on the balcony - ” Magnus began, only to be cut off quickly by his lover.

“Come on, Magnus, I was under a spell,” Alec tried. “I can’t be held accountable for my actions.” His lips turned up slightly and he added, “I call a do-over.”

Magnus sighed, though a faint smile did find its way to him at the other’s antics. “Alexander, you and I both know that there’s something else going on here, for...that to be your first instinct. Jace reacted like a fighter; he subdued the attacker. Clary reacted like a teenage girl; she tried to find someone to listen to her. You reacted like a suicidal man, Alexander.”

Alec hung his head. Magnus was right. And he knew he had to tell the warlock the truth before he lost his nerve.

“Look, Magnus, the first thing I want you to know is that I’m not suicidal,” Alec stated. “I haven’t been in a while.” He paused to look down, a blush tinting his pale cheeks. “Not since I met you, actually.”

Magnus smiled at Alec’s words, but the smile quickly fell when he realised what exactly his boyfriend had just said. “But you were, then? You were suicidal?”

Alec took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and told the truth about himself for the first time in his life. “Yes.”

Magnus sank back against the armchair, processing this new information. “When was that?” 

Alec shook his head. “That’s not important now, Magnus. I’ll tell you when and why some other time. I want us to get through tonight first.”

Magnus nodded. That was fair. “Why were the others so...unaffected by it?” he asked. “Jace, Izzy, Clary, even your mother - none of them even questioned it. It was almost like they were expecting something like this to happen.”

“I’ve always been self-destructive, Magnus,” Alec admitted. “Even when I was a little boy. I would train with Jace, and he would kick my ass, as usual. And my parents would push me to be better, faster, stronger - so I would go back to the room and train and train and train until every muscle in my body hurt and Izzy had to drag me back to my room herself.” He shook his head tightly at the memory. “I don’t know why I reacted that way instead of fighting them over it, like Jace would have done, or deliberately disobeying the rules out of spite, like Izzy did. When I started to grow older, it got worse. After every bad hunt we had, or every fight between Jace and I, or every time my parents ridiculed me, my first instinct would be to go back to that room and punch something until my knuckles bled or shoot my bow and arrow from the roof until all the skin on my hand was raw and bloody. So that’s exactly what I did. Izzy and Jace tried to stop me, but eventually, they gave up.” He let out a low chuckle. “I was just too stubborn, I guess.”

Magnus didn’t say anything, obviously sensing that there was more to the story and encouraging him with his eyes to continue. 

Alec said, in a voice barely above a whisper, “Soon after Clary arrived, it started to get a lot more direct.”

Alec’s low tones were no match for Magnus’s sharp warlock hearing. “What do you mean by that?” he ventured carefully. 

“Instead of just training until I felt numb enough to go on, I started hurting myself,” Alec replied. His tone was empty and blank, revealing nothing. He kept his gaze trained resolutely on the floor. “Really hurting myself.” He took a deep breath, and Magnus heard the young Shadowhunter shudder, a sound he had heard only once before, on that fateful night that Jocelyn had been killed and Alec sought refuge at his apartment. He recognised it as a telltale sign that Alec was about to break down.

“You know, it’s okay to cry,” Magnus said, reaching out to his boyfriend and intertwining their hands. “It’s okay, Alexander.” 

“I know,” Alec replied, squeezing the warlock’s hands in his own. “I just want to get through this, Magnus.” His voice was thick with unshed tears, and Magnus felt a few prick his own eyelids at the sight of his lover in so much pain. 

Alec took a deep, shuddery breath and Magnus found himself moving, almost unconsciously, to kneel directly in front of the other man. He gripped Alec’s hands tight and said, “I’m here.”

Alec leaned forward to close the gap between them and pressed a soft kiss to Magnus’s lips. It was over before Magnus had time to react, and Alec focused his gaze on the floor once again. 

“It’s easier if I show you,” Alec said, and removed his hands from those of his lover’s. His fingers reached to grasp the cuff of his black, button-up dress shirt. A block of ice settled in Magnus’s stomach. He knew what the other man was about to reveal.

Alec rolled his sleeves up to his elbows and presented his pale, scarred wrists to Magnus. 

“Oh, Alexander.”

Magnus gingerly reached out and took Alec’s wrists in his hands, carefully turning them over and inspecting them inch-by-inch. From the crook of his elbow to the edge of his palm, there were hundreds of tiny white scars, all varying in length and thickness. Other, more recent, scars littered the insides of both of his wrists. Magnus noted with relief, however, that there were no fresh marks on Alec’s skin. 

“I’m so sorry, Alexander,” Magnus murmured. 

The young Shadowhunter looked up, bewildered. “What for?”

“I’m so sorry you had to go through this,” Magnus said. All was quiet for a minute or two. Magnus ran the pads of his thumbs over the multitude of scars lining his lover’s wrists. Eventually, Alec spoke again. 

“That night...when I killed - ” he amended his statement after receiving a sharp look from Magnus, “- when that demon killed Jocelyn, I almost took a blade to my skin like before. I haven’t cut since the day I kissed you in front of everyone. Living your truth is, apparently, really freeing.” A small smile crossed Alec’s lips at the memory. “But the night Clary’s mom died, I got really close. I shot my arrows all night long, and I would have kept going, too, if Jace hadn’t found me on the roof and stopped me.” Alec chuckled lowly. “You’ve heard of people running away from their problems before, but that night, I literally jumped off the roof to run away from mine.” He smiled crookedly at Magnus, a sentiment that the powerful warlock returned tenfold. 

“I only ran away from Jace because I felt awful about him having to deal with my shit after he literally just got back from prison in the City of Bones. I couldn’t put that on him. But I guess I needed to put it on somebody, because I ended up here.”

Magnus reached up to tuck a strand of Alec’s thick black hair back into place and smiled fondly at his Shadowhunter. “I’m so glad you came to me that night, Alec, instead of hurting yourself.” 

Alec smiled at the warlock before him. “I am, too, Magnus.” A shadow crossed his eyes and he added, “I guess I did hurt myself, though. Not as bad as I usually would, but I did.” Magnus nodded in confirmation of this statement and Alec let out a small sigh. Magnus gave their joined hands a supportive squeeze, and Alec smiled gratefully at him. The Shadowhunter traced patterns with this thumb on his boyfriend’s hand as silence enveloped the two. 

Eventually, Magnus spoke up in a soft, thoughtful voice.

“You know, when you came to me that night, I had my suspicions,” Magnus admitted to his boyfriend. He clutched Alec’s hand tighter as he spoke. “There was something in your eyes, I suppose. I guessed that you didn’t heal yourself on purpose pretty quickly. After that night, I started to think maybe there was something more going on with you than I knew about. Now I know.”

“I’m sorry, Magnus,” Alec said. Fresh tears pinpricked his eyes at the saddened words of his boyfriend. “I didn’t know how to tell you and honestly, I was scared. I thought...well, I thought you’d leave me. That you wouldn’t want to deal with someone like me. It was hard enough for you when I was trying to figure myself out and figure out what to do about Lydia. I guess I just thought that if I told you about all of this, you wouldn’t want to be with me anymore.”

“Alexander, look at me,” Magnus commaded. He gripped Alec’s chin and forced it upwards until his lover’s captivating ice-blue eyes stared into his own gold irises - the catlike warlock’s mark that he took care to keep hidden from everyone else. 

“There is nothing in this world that could ever make me not want to be with you,” Magnus stated passionately. “Alexander, you fill me with joy. You give me light that I have not seen in centuries. I feel for you something that I don’t know I have ever felt before, at least not in such an intense, all-consuming way. You make me happy. I love you, Alexander. I love you so much.”

“I love you, too, Magnus.” Alec’s eyes filled with tears, and he took no measures to prevent them from cascading down his cheeks whatsoever. Magnus reached for his lover and pulled Alec into a hug. The younger Shadowhunter’s head rested in the crook of Magnus’s neck. The centuries-old warlock hugged his boyfriend closer. Alec’s sobs shook his entire body. Magnus stroked his hand down Alec’s back and whispered sweet nothings into his ear until the other boy was feeling calmer. 

“I don’t know that I can ever say this enough,” Alec stated, “but I love you, Magnus Bane.”

“I love you as well, Alexander Gideon Lightwood.”

With that, Alec and Magnus leaned forward, only mere inches apart, and connected their lips. Unlike any of the kisses they’d shared in times past, this kiss was sealed with so many things - compassion, empathy, concern, love. 

Alec touched his lips to Magnus’s again, drunk on the feeling that emanated from both of them. Love. As he felt his eyes flutter closed under Magnus’s gentle touch, Alec could only think one thing:

So this is what it’s like to feel alive.

**Author's Note:**

> As you may have noticed, there is now a sequel/companion fic to this called Awake! It details a similar talk between Jace and Alec after the events of 2x08. 
> 
> Here is the link to that fic:  
> [Awake](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23782039)
> 
> If you would like to join a fandom Discord server (Shadowhunters and other fandoms available by role) I Mod a lovely server full of enthusiasm and encouragement!  
> [Join us here](https://discord.gg/82pvdE39fD) for lots of chaos and fun! It's a really great place. 
> 
> With that, I'll see you soon! <3
> 
> ~ Em


End file.
